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Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#171

Post by KirinDave »

polock wrote: post #144
blondie9x wrote: post #141

As engineers and technologists we must always be mindful of our impact on the planet. Bitcoin has been a disaster when it comes to environmental concerns. It is a shadow on techs efforts to lead the way toward a sustainable future. We need to figure out a way to solve this issue, especially if cryptocurrency utilization is to increase, in particular through Bitcoin: Bitcoin uses about 32 terawatts of energy every yea…

You're wasting energy for posting comments too. If we think a way like this, we can't no anything.

What on earth is this logic. Bitcoin is _by design_ inefficient. Its scaling inefficiency is the principle method by which it ensures fairness. That's what PoW chain commits are. That's how they work.

Bitcoin was ALWAYS going to be inefficient. It was assumed that hardware would scale to keep up with demand, but that hasn't proven true in the advent of ad hoc mining pools.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#172

Post by etr-strike »

Xorlev wrote: post #131
whiskyant wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize bitcoin is constantly evolving and can change its code right? If another crypto creates a better scaling tech, bitcoin can incorporate that idea.

Can, but won’t as has been proven repeatedly.

SegWit, Mimble Wimble, Schnorr Signatures, Lightning Network, and Rootstock all prove you're talking out of your ass.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#173

Post by KirinDave »

gst wrote: post #68
runeks wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment channels (which Lightning Network uses) allows for unlimited transactions, but not an unlimited number of users, because — as you say — two on-chain transactions (deposit+withdrawal) are required to initiate and finalize a transfer. Given that the Bitcoin blockchain can only handle ~20M transaction per month, this means only 20M people can deposit to/withdraw from the Lightning Network (LN) per month. To this…

~20M transaction per month are an arbitrary limit. The economic majority recently decided against increasing that limit, but this doesn't mean it's not going to get increased at some later point.

There are very good technical reasons for that limit. It is not as simple a problem as "voting".

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#175

Post by fragsworth »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #158
noobermin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a hell lot like changing the goal posts.

No, plenty of us have been saying this for a long time. Here is a HN post from 5 years ago where I say: “even if it's only ever used for politically sensitive transactions, and it never takes off as a consumer payment service, it will be a very big economy” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5526684#5526972 The goalposts for Bitcoin have always just been “can it sustain its market cap?”

Also it's not like everyone you see on the Internet is the same person.

Anyone who was hoping for it to replace credit cards didn't understand the system. Lots of other folks have known the limitations of Bitcoin for years and what we're seeing today was totally predictable.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#176

Post by zeep »

dangero wrote: post #118
greg_____ory wrote: post #76

Litecoin is the solution. It was not designed to be a Bitcoin replacement, but rather to handle this exactly.

No it wasn't. It's 99% a copy of Bitcoin with small configuration file differences. It is configured for one order of magnitude more transactions, but it provides no architectural scaling innovations. It's just like Bitcoin -- can only be used at scale as a settlement layer.

Litecoin is similar to Bitcoin, but it was the first to make some of the changes that were made to both, like Segwit ...

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#177

Post by etr-strike »

jononor wrote: post #70
runeks wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was the first. It was the genesis idea. But good lord, do we think it's the actual solution? What would be the odds? If superior technology comes along, what will prevent Bitcoin from adopting this, and using its network effect to outmaneuver a competing blockchain? A couple of months ago, the Bitcoin network adopted the SegWit protocol change, which could be considered a minor fix (no major improvements to scal…

Adoption of Segwit (a minor change) was neither quick, easy or without controversy. It does not lend much faith in the Bitcoin community ability to deploy big changes in a timely manner.

The consensus rules of bitcoin are supposed to be incredibly difficult to change. That's a feature, not a bug.

Changing consensus rules is only easy if the network is centralized. That's not something I want to have in my money.

If new technology demonstrates it's value beyond doubt, upgrading the network will have vast consensus.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#179

Post by tyler33 »

zorked wrote: post #55
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm living in a different world than yours. Where I live, it's all different that what you said. The block size hasn't increased. Instead, a new chain forked out with an 8MB block size, it's called Bitcoin cash. Lightning network hasn't launched yet. A few people are testing alpha on the main net and that's it. (Btw I'm a skeptic of lightning network so i'm not advocating lightning network here).

I think he referred to SegWit, which increases the block size a bit under special conditions. That's the thing about bitcoin scaling: instead of improving scaling by increasing the block size (which will be required anyway even with Lightning), a solution that requires only changing the thousands of full nodes, they go for SegWit, which requires changing millions of wallets. Then everybody wonders why adoption isn't…

I think lighting is more to trading webs, if you want to transfer from bittrex to blockchain.info it would be trough light so all this kind of transactions would free the blockchain

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#180

Post by zrm »

omio wrote: post #155
zrm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is being missed by your analysis is that the value in a blockchain comes more from the network than the tech. That is the reason why anyone can't just create a new coin and expect everyone else to value it, but that doesn't mean there can't be any viable competitors. And if a competitor with a sufficient advantage got popular enough, it could take the lead. For example, the hack Bitcoin used to become popular…

That wouldn't work because mining blocks also validates transactions.

> That wouldn't work because mining blocks also validates transactions.

It's possible to validate transactions with proof of work and compensate the work with transaction fees rather than the creation of new coins.

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